Defining Communication: Concepts and Modern Channels

Every business plan, every advertisement, and every WhatsApp message to a client starts with the same basic act: communication. It sounds almost too simple to study formally, yet communication is one of the most researched processes in management and social science. Before you can master persuasive writing, negotiation, or public speaking, you need a clear grip on what communication actually means and how it has changed shape in the internet era. Let’s break it down.

What is communication, really? 🔗

The most widely quoted starting point in business communication textbooks is the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, which describes communication as the transmission or exchange of information, knowledge, or ideas through speech, writing, or mechanical and electronic media. Notice two things in this definition. First, communication is not a single action but an exchange, which implies at least two parties. Second, the medium is flexible; it does not have to be spoken or written, it can just as easily be a hand gesture, a company logo, or a push notification.

A slightly different but equally popular version of the same dictionary entry adds a performance standard to this exchange. It calls communication the successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings, not just the attempt to share them. This distinction matters in a business context. Sending an email is not the same as communicating. If your recipient misreads your tone, ignores the message, or misunderstands your instructions, the transmission happened, but the communication arguably failed.

The essential elements of every communication act 🔗

Regardless of which definition you use, most communication scholars agree that every act of communication involves three non-negotiable parts: a sender who encodes a message, the message itself, and a recipient who decodes it. Communication skills researchers add a fourth part that is often overlooked by students: the response or feedback loop, since a sender typically needs to know whether the recipient understood the message correctly. In a business setting, this feedback could be a reply email, a nod in a meeting, or a customer clicking “buy now.”

Lasswell’s five questions: a business lens 🔗

While the dictionary tells you what communication is, it does not tell you how to analyse it. That is where American political scientist Harold Lasswell comes in. In 1948, he proposed a compact formula that is still taught in journalism, marketing, and management courses today. According to Lasswell’s model, any act of communication can be broken down by asking: who says what, in which channel, to whom, and with what effect.

Each question maps to a distinct part of the communication process, and each has real business consequences:

The model is not without critics. It was built for one-way mass communication, so it does not naturally account for feedback, noise, or the cultural context that shapes how a message is received. Later theorists expanded on this gap by adding feedback loops into more circular models of communication. Still, Lasswell’s five questions remain a fast, practical checklist. Before you send that internal memo or client proposal, running it through “who, what, channel, whom, effect” can catch problems before they cost you a client or a reputation.

From letters to smartphones: how technology rewrote the channel 🔗

If Lasswell’s model tells you communication needs a channel, the last few decades have completely rewritten which channels are available. Business communication used to run almost entirely on paper: typed letters, memos circulated by hand, and telegrams for anything urgent. A reply could take days or weeks depending on distance. Information Technology changed that timeline from days to seconds.

The shift is measurable, not just anecdotal 🔗

India’s own telecom data backs this up. Internet subscriptions in the country have grown steadily year after year, a trend the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India tracks in its regular subscription reports. As more Indians came online through affordable smartphones and cheaper data plans, the default channel for business correspondence quietly shifted from the postal department to the smartphone in your pocket.

WhatsApp is the clearest example of this shift inside India specifically. What began as a personal messaging app has become core business infrastructure. Its business-focused version has been growing fast enough in India that WhatsApp Business monthly active users in the country have expanded far quicker than the standard consumer app, as small shop owners, service providers, and large enterprises alike use it to confirm orders, share invoices, and handle customer queries.

Which channels dominate business communication today 🔗

The internet did not just digitise the letter; it multiplied the number of channels available, each suited to a different purpose. A useful way to think about this is by matching the channel to the message’s urgency and formality.

This shift has real upsides for a business. Internet-based tools now let a business owner stay in real-time contact with staff, vendors, and customers from anywhere, sharing documents and holding meetings without waiting for anyone to be in the same room, let alone the same city. A negotiation that once took three rounds of postal letters can now be settled over a single video call.

Why the definition and the channel both matter for you 🔗

Here’s where the two halves of this topic connect. The Oxford definition tells you that communication only counts as successful when the message actually lands the way it was meant to. Lasswell’s model tells you that the channel you pick directly shapes whether that landing happens. Choose email for something that needs an instant reply, and you may lose the client to a slower response time. Choose WhatsApp for a formal legal notice, and you may lose the paper trail you need later. As a business communication student, this is the practical takeaway: the “successful conveying of ideas” that the dictionary definition demands is not automatic just because technology has made sending messages faster. Speed is not the same as clarity, and reach is not the same as understanding. The same firm that can now message a hundred customers in seconds through WhatsApp Business still has to get the “what” and the “effect” right, or that speed just means more people receiving the wrong message faster.

What do you think? When you’re deciding between an email and a WhatsApp message for something important, what factors actually guide your choice? And has the constant availability that smartphones offer made business communication genuinely more effective, or has it just made it faster without necessarily making it clearer?

References

1. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=87012&section=2
2. https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/what-is-communication.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasswell's_model_of_communication
4. https://www.trai.gov.in/release-publication/reports/telecom-subscriptions-reports
5. https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/14/whatsapps-biggest-market-is-becoming-its-toughest-test/
6. https://www.vonage.com/resources/articles/how-the-internet-changed-communication-in-business/